US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent pressured the World Bank to drop its 45% climate finance target. This is Washington doing what a majority shareholder is supposed to do: enforce discipline on an institution funded largely by American taxpayers before it drifts permanently from its founding purpose. World Bank exists to reduce poverty, not to hit an arbitrary climate percentage, and a rigid 45% quota forces the bank to fund whatever qualifies as climate adjacent even when a straightforward road, hospital, or irrigation project would do more for the actual poor people the bank is supposed to serve. Bessent isn't objecting to climate spending existing, he's objecting to a quota that locks in spending by category regardless of what borrowing countries actually need most.